NFL IN LA: GENSLER UNVEILS NEW DESIGNS FOR FARMERS FIELD
By Jaboner Jackson 9:30 pm | Architecture firm Gensler revealed today new designs for AEG’s planned downtown Los Angeles football stadium, Farmers Field. This past summer, footballphds.com explored the issue of architecture as it relates to AEG’s corporate design specifications. In our article, we urged Gensler to look beyond the shiny and suburban architectural forms that AEG has relied upon for LA Live and Staples Center and instead add to downtown Los Angeles’ architectural landscape by designing a stadium with soul. Nonetheless, todays’ designs are more of the same in terms of AEG’s architectural footprint—nondescript shine.
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NFL IN LA: THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF MAJESTIC’S LOS ANGELES STADIUM
By Jaboner Jackson 8 am| At the NFL’s league meeting next week, current NFL owners are slated to hear about updates concerning the two stadium projects in Los Angeles, Farmers Field and Los Angeles Stadium. Having already covered the AEG project extensively, I have begun to examine Majestic Realty’s planned stadium in City of Industry, tentatively called Los Angeles Stadium or LA Stadium for short. Majestic has been working on LA Stadium since 2007 and has been shovel ready since 2009, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption for the stadium. Despite AEG’s push for Farmers Field, Majestic remains focused on convincing the NFL that Los Angeles Stadium is the right stadium for the league’s return to Los Angeles. I recently caught up with Taylor Talt, Majestic Realty’s Project Manger for Los Angeles Stadium, to explore the planned stadium in full. Yesterday, I reviewed the company behind LA Stadium, and today, I turn my attention to the project itself.
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NFL IN LA: ARCHITECTURE FIRMS GENSLER AND POPULOUS
By Jaboner Jackson 8 am | In March 2011, AEG formally announced that they had hired architecture firm, Gensler, to design Farmers Field. Of course, both AEG and Gensler were confident that they would work together on the football stadium long before March, especially since Gensler was the lead architect on AEG’s other downtown Los Angeles project, LA Live. In preparation of working on Farmers Field, Gensler started looking for downtown Los Angeles space in 2010 and by the time the agreement between AEG and Gensler was finalized in early 2011, Gensler had decided to leave its office space in Santa Monica, where it had operating for twenty years, and uproot to AEG-land, aka downtown Los Angeles.
Gensler’s move from the Westside to the central part of the city demonstrates the confidence that Gensler has in AEG getting Farmers Field done. The Westside has traditionally been the epicenter for architecture and design firms in the Los Angeles area. For example, Populous, who has been selected by AEG to design Pico Hall, the new wing of the Los Angeles Convention Center that will rise once the current hall gets razed for Farmers Field, maintains its Los Angeles presence on the Westside in Venice.
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